I fully concur in the above, and hope that Mrs. Griffing will receive a conspicuous place in the Freedman"s Bureau. She is the best qualified of any person within my knowledge; her whole heart is in the work.
B. F. WADE, SOLOMON FOOT, IRA HARRIS, E. D. MORGAN, W. P. FESSENDEN.
I most fully concur.
J. V. DRIGGS, T. W. FERRY.
I fully concur in all that is said within in behalf of Mrs.
Griffing, and earnestly commend her to the favor sought.
GEO. W. JULIAN.
WASHINGTON, _July 9, 1869_.
Mrs. Griffing has for several years devoted herself with great industry, intelligence, and success to the freed people in the District of Columbia, and in this service she has accomplished more good than any other one individual within my acquaintance.
When the War Department was in my charge, she rendered very efficient aid of a humane character to relieve the wants and sufferings of dest.i.tute freed people, and was untiring in her benevolent exertions. Property for distribution was often placed in her hands, or under her directions, and she was uniformly trustworthy and skillful in its management and administration. In my judgment, she is ent.i.tled to the most full confidence and trust.
EDWIN M. STANTON.
JEFFERSON, OHIO, _Nov. 12, 1869_.
MY DEAR MRS. GRIFFING:--On my return from Washington I found your kind letter of the 28th, ult. I regret much that I did not meet with you at Washington. I know your merits. I know that no person in America has done so much for the cause of humanity for the last four years as you have. Your disinterested labors have saved hundreds of poor human beings not only the greatest dest.i.tution and misery, but from actual starvation and death. I also know that in doing this you have not only devoted your whole time, but all the property you have. And I know, too, that your labors are just as necessary now as they ever have been. Others know all this as well as I do. Secretary Stanton can vouch for it all, and I can not doubt that Congress will not only pay you for what you have done, but give you a position where this necessary work may be done by you effectually. This is the very thing that ought to be done at once. Since the Bureau has been abolished it will be impossible to get along with the great influx of imbecility and dest.i.tution which gathers and centers in Washington every winter, without some one being appointed to see to it, and certainly everybody knows that there is no one so competent for this work as yourself. To this end I will do whatever I can, but you know that I am now out of place, and have no influence at Court, but whatever I can do to effect so desirable an object will be done.
Truly yours, B. F. WADE.
SENATE CHAMBER, _April 2_.
DEAR MADAM:--I have your note of the 31st, and am very sorry to hear that there is so much distress in the city. I shall endeavor to bring the charter up as soon as I have an opportunity; but while this trial is pending,[30] it is improbable that any legislative business will be done. I am as anxious as you are to secure its adoption.
Yours truly, CHARLES SUMNER.
MRS. J. S. GRIFFING, Washington.
BOSTON, _27th July, 1869_.
DEAR MADAM:--The statement or memorial which you placed in my hands was never printed. It is, probably, now on the files of the Senate. I wish I could help your effort with the Secretary of War. You must persevere. If Gen. Rawlins understands the case, he will do all that you desire. Accept my best wishes, and believe me, faithfully yours,
CHARLES SUMNER.
Will Mrs. Griffing let Mr. Sumner know what inst.i.tution or person should disburse the money appropriated?
SENATE CHAMBER, Tuesday.
LETTERS ON THE FREEDMAN"S RELIEF a.s.sOCIATION.
WASHINGTON, _April 8, "71_.
_To the Mayor and Board of Common Council, City of Washington, District of Columbia_:
MESSRS.:--I have the honor to state that the aged, sick, crippled, and blind persons, for whom the National Freedman"s Relief a.s.sociation of this District partially provides, are at this time in very great dest.i.tution, many of them in extreme suffering for want of food and fuel. The a.s.sociation has provided clothing. It is now twelve weeks since the Government appropriation for their temporary support for the last year was exhausted. This a.s.sociation has by soliciting contributions, up to this time, relieved the most extreme cases, that otherwise must have died; but the want of food is so great among at least a thousand of these, not one of whom is able _to labor_ for a support, that it is impossible to provide the absolute relief they must have, by further contributions from the charitable and the humane.
I would therefore most earnestly appeal in their behalf, that the Hon. Council and Mayor will appropriate from the market fund for their temporary relief one thousand dollars, to be disbursed by the above-named a.s.sociation, which sum will enable these dest.i.tute persons to subsist until, as is hoped and believed, Congress will make the usual special appropriation for their partial temporary support. This a.s.sociation to report the use of such money to the Mayor and Common Council of the City of Washington, D. C.
Very respectfully, J. S. GRIFFING, _General Agent N. F. R. a.s.sociation, D. C._
TRIBUNE OFFICE, NEW YORK, _Sept. 7, 1870_.
MRS. GRIFFING:--In my judgment you and others who wish to befriend the blacks crowded into Washington, do them great injury. Had they been told years ago, "You _must_ find work; go out and seek it," they would have been spared much misery. They are an easy, worthless race, taking no thought for the morrow, and liking to lean on those who befriend them. Your course aggravates their weaknesses, when you should raise their ambition and stimulate them to self-reliance. Unless you change your course speedily and signally, the swarming of blacks to the District will increase, and the argument that Slavery is their natural condition will be immeasurably strengthened. So long as they look to others to calculate and provide for them, they are not truly free. If there be any woman capable of earning wages who would rather some one else than herself should pay her pa.s.sage to the place where she can have work, then she needs reconstruction and awakening to a just and honest self-reliance.
Yours, HORACE GREELEY.
MRS. J. S. GRIFFING, Washington, D. C.
_Sept. 12, 1870_.
HORACE GREELEY:
DEAR SIR:--Much as I respect your judgment, and admire your candor, I must express entire dissent with your views in reference to those who are laboring to befriend the Freedmen, and also of your estimate of the character of the black race.
When you condemn my work for the old slaves, who can not labor, and are "crowded into Washington" by force of events uncontrollable, as a "great injury," I am at a loss to perceive your estimate of any and all benevolent action. If, to provide houses, food, clothing, and other physical comforts, to those broken-down aged slaves whom we have liberated in their declining years, when all their strength is gone, and for whom no home, family friendship, or subsistence is furnished; if this is a "great injury," in my judgment there is no call for alms-house, hospital, home, or asylum in human society, and all appropriations of sympathy and material aid are worse than useless, and demand your earnest rebuke and discountenance, and to the unfortunates crowded into these inst.i.tutions, you should say, "You must find work, go out and seek it." So far as an humble individual can be, I am subst.i.tuting to these a freedman"s (relief) bureau; sanitary commission; church sewing society, to aid the poor; orphan asylum; old people"s home; hospital and alms-house for the sick and the blind; minister-at-large, to visit the sick, console the dying, and bury the dead; and wherein I fail, and perhaps you discriminate, is the want of wealthy, popular, and what is called honorable a.s.sociations. Were these at my command, with the field before me, it would be easy to ill.u.s.trate the practical use as well as the divine origin of the Golden Rule.
If, in your criticism, you refer to my secondary department in which I have labored to furnish employment to the Freedmen both in the District and out, is it not a direct reflection upon all efforts made for the distribution of labor? Is my course more aggravating to the weakness of dest.i.tute unemployed freed people, than emigrant societies, intelligence offices, benevolent ladies"
societies, and young men"s Christian a.s.sociations, to give work to the poor of all nations; and lastly the Government Indian department, that has wisely called to its aid the American missionary, and the Quaker societies, to farm out the poor Indians? or, if the measures put forth by these admissible agents can raise the ambition and stimulate to self-reliance their beneficiaries, will you be good enough to show wherein the same means, which I claim to employ, must have the opposite effect upon the freedmen crowded into Washington.
Is it possible that the swarming of the Irish, Swiss, and German poor, to the city of New York, is attributable to the intelligence offices and immigration societies of your city, and not, as we have supposed, to the want of work and bread at home, and is there really a danger, that in providing and calculating for them, we shall strengthen the argument of race, while our inst.i.tutions of charity are filled with descendants of the Saxon, the Norman, the Goth, and the Vandal? I think not.
Respectfully yours, JOSEPHINE S. GRIFFING.
_From the New National Era._
MRS. JOSEPHINE S. GRIFFING THE ORIGINATOR OF THE FREEDMEN"s BUREAU.
This truly excellent and n.o.ble woman was fitly spoken of in the _New National Era_ just after her death, but at that early date it was not possible to obtain the facts to prove the statement at the head of this article, which is but simple truth and historic justice.
Mrs. Griffing was engaged in an arduous work for the Loyal League in the Northwest in 1862, and foresaw the need of a comprehensive system of protection, help, and education, for the slaves in the trying transition of freedom. She sought counsel and aid from fit persons in Ohio and Michigan, and came here only in 1863 to begin her work of urging the plan of a Bureau for that purpose. Nothing daunted by coldness or indifference she n.o.bly persisted, until in December, 1863, a bill for a Bureau of Emanc.i.p.ation was introduced in the House of Representatives by Hon T. D. Elliott, of Ma.s.sachusetts. After some changes in the bill, and a committee of conference of the House and Senate, and the valuable aid of Sumner, Wilson, and other Senators, the bill for the Freedman"s Bureau finally pa.s.sed in March, 1865, and was signed by President Lincoln just before his a.s.sa.s.sination.
The original idea was Mrs. Griffing"s; her untiring efforts gave it life, and it is but just that the colored people, of the South especially, should bear in grateful remembrance this able and gentle woman, whose life and strength were spent for their poor sufferers, and who called into useful existence that great national charity, the Freedman"s Bureau.